College students aren't as "techie" as we thought

College students spend a lot of their time on the Web, but they aren't the "technology wizards" we think they might be.

A study conducted by Nielson Norman Group on college students revealed some intriguing results about students' Internet use. It showed that students rather use websites that have a "clean and simple" look, instead of a "flashy and busy" look. They also "prefer websites that are easy to scan and don't intimidate them with a wall of gray text."

Despite being more comfortable using new technology than most older users, college students tended to "avoid Web elements that they perceive[d] as 'unknown' for fear of wasting time." Students are obviously very busy and as a result want to acquire information as quickly as possible. If they find something on a site that is difficult or confusing, they'll lose patience and leave the site rather than sit there and figure out the issue.

The article termed college students as "search dominant." This means that students don't like to be swarmed by visuals and audio and motion clips. They "gravitate toward one very plain user interface: the search engine." One user was quoted saying that websites should "stick to simplicity in design, but not be old-fashioned. Clear menus, not too many flashy or moving things because it can be quite confusing."

College students don't require the sites they use to entertain them. These students are "goal-oriented" people, therefore, the websites they use are sites "that [help] them quickly accomplish their goals." These students also don't always trust the information they read on the first website they look at. As a matter of fact, "many students were skeptical or turned off by websites that lacked depth and detail, or didn't answer their questions."

We know that college students are intelligent because, well, they're in college. They have strong reading skills and are more than apt to reading advanced writing. With this all being said, students don't want to read a large amount of text. They prefer to scan a page to retrieve information instead of reading it all word for word. As previously stated, college students are busy people and want to quickly accomplish their goals.

International students were also tested in this study. And believe it or not, there was no differences between the U.S. students and the foreign-born students. Both groups of students were the same in regards to their usage of online websites.

The participants involved in the study were college students, both undergraduate and graduate students, ranging in age from 18-24. Forty-three students in four countries (Australia, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States) participated.

One method used for testing was that the students had to complete tasks in a one-on-one session -- one person being the participant and the other being the observer. For some of those tasks, the students could use any website(s), and for the others, they had to use a predetermined site. Another method used was that the students' Internet use was recorded at home for two days using screen-recording software.